The people who know God well - the mystics, the hermits, those who risk everything to find God - always meet a lover, not a dictator. God is never found to be an abusive father or a tyrannical mother, but always a lover who is more than we dared hope for. How different than the "account manager" that most people seem to worship. God is a lover who receives and forgives everything.

It is so important to balance orthodoxy with orthopraxy.

A good teacher teaches people how to see, not what to see.

Who is telling us about the false self today? Who is even equipped tell us? Many clergy have not figured this out for themselves, since even ministry can be a career decision or an attraction to "religion" more than the result of an encounter with God or themselves. Formal religious status can maintain the false self rather effectively, especially if there are a lot of social payoffs like special respect, titles, salaries, a good self image, or nice costumes. It is no accident that the religious "Pharisees" became the symbolic bad guys in the Jesus story.

One wonders how far spiritual and political leaders can genuinely lead us without some degree of mystical seeing and action.

Life is not a matter of creating a special name for ourselves, but of uncovering the name we have always had.

If you don't transform your suffering, you'll transmit it.